Post-Darwinist

This blog provides stories that Denyse O'Leary, a Toronto-based journalist, has found to be of interest, as she covers the growing intelligent design controversy. It supports her book By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg 2004). Does the universe - and do life forms - show evidence of intelligent design? If so, Carl Sagan was wrong and so is Richard Dawkins. Now what?

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Monday, June 16, 2008

Excerpts from Ezra Levant's freedom of speech talk at the Bar Association in Toronto June 16 2008

There is growing ferment in Canada over our shadow justice system, known as "human rights commissions." They are the "human" face of fascism, so far as I can see, and Alberta civil rights lawyer Ezra Levant (one of those charged, along with Mark Steyn ) has distinguished himself by exposing what really happens when the social engineers take over a country.

This just in: "Red Fred., Bishop Henry (perhaps the only Catholic bishop in Canada to speak out), has just "blasted Alberta premier Ed Stelmach for the deepening disgrace of our shadow justice system:

"Each judgment emanating out of our various human right commissions seems to be more brazen and bizarre than the one that preceded it. However, for inane stupidity and gross miscarriage of justice our own Alberta Human Rights Tribunal deserves to take first prize for its treatment of [Protestant pastor] Stephen Boissoin. "

(And yes, there is a science component to this. A senior scientist has formally advised Canadians to quit feeding growth hormone to the Nannysaurus. As the only alternative to extinction, she should be put on a strict diet.)

Anyway, I am posting excerpts of Levant's talk, as I type them:

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Sections (not yet linked)

* Burning books and censorship just "not a Jewish way of thinking." * The need for anti-hate organizations to drum up business * Canadian Jewish organization helped found the Nazi Party in Canada? (!?)

* Shutting down Internet sites likened to twentieth century book burning

* The "human" face of fascism: Stopping hate by creating much more hate

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I thought I would start out by doing some thinking about our people and censorship - how Jews and censorship worked out over the past two thousand years. The first case of Jewish censorship I remember was by a Jewish high priest named Caiaphas. He put Jesus on trial. ... That first and most important exercise in Jewish censorship didn't quite work out the way we thought.

And from that time on I went through history and really Jews haven't done a lot of censoring because to censor you need the power of the state and we truly hadn't had a state for two thousand years. By contrast, we were the subject of tremendous censorship through the ages.

The Jews got involved to our great discredit with the Communists in Russia, ... and helped set up rules of fascism and censorship which were later used against them in Stalin's purges against the Jews. That exercise in thought control and political control backfired on the Jews."

And the only other instance I can think of of Jews really using censorship laws was in Weimar [pre-Nazi] Germany, which had laws similar to Canada's [current human rights] laws - I would say less vague than Canada's anti-speech - hate speech - laws. And about two hundred hate speech trials happened during Weimar Germany. Adolf Hitler himself was caught up in them. And how did that work out for the Jews? Well, those two hundred trials afforded a tremendous forum for haters and anti-Semites to spread their views, with the newspapers in attendance. People who would have been ignored or dealt with otherwise were made important, sort of like the Jewish Congress made Ernst Zundel and James Keegstra international celebrity superstar Jew haters. People who never would have been heard of before ....

The need for anti-hate organizations to drum up business

Levant argued that there is a "symbiosis" between official anti-hate groups and otherwise insignificant anti-Semites:

Because when there's not that much real hate out there, there is not a lot of business for the anti-hate industry.

Two hundred trials of anti-Semitism didn't stop the Holocaust. Of course not. Did it help the Holocaust? Arguably so, in that it gave publicity to Nazi Germany. And, when Adolph Hitler took over, he had that law at his disposal. And he used it himself.

So those are the three main instances of Jewish censorship that I can think - Caiaphas, and that didn't work out well, the Soviet Union didn't work out well for the Jews, and the Weimar Republic.

He noted that Israel has military censorship, as it is in a perpetual state of war, and agreed that limits on speech are justified in certain instances (serious threats, copyright, fraud, forgery, defamation), but noted that all these types of law have built-in (in some cases centuries) of legal defenses. However, in the case of defamation law, truth and fair comment are defense, and damage must be measured in a reasonable way.

Canadian Jewish organization helped found the Nazi Party in Canada? (!?)

But what happens when you support censorship, as historically, Canada's officialJews do? By official Jews I don't mean rabbis, I mean people who are Jews for aliving. [much laughter]

There's a lot of moral hazards when you are a Jew for a living, not a rabbi. When part of your organization's mandate is fighting against "hate" there is a moral hazard: You want to see hate out there to fight. Otherwise, what's your purpose in life? If you're a hatebuster, you need something to bust.

Mr. Levant indicated that he would shortly publish to his Web site a 1966 Maclean's magazine story that recounted that the Canadian Jewish Congress helped to finance and organize the Nazi Party of Canada.

In the Sixties the Canadian Jewish Congress helped to finance and organize the Nazi Party of Canada. You heard me right. Just twenty years after the end of the Second World War with all these veterans, ... was there really a risk that Canada would go Nazi? Why were they doing that? They would say they were doing that to infiltrate. Perhaps. But I don't think there was any real risk that Canada in 1966 would turn Nazi. I think it was that symbiosis. If you're in the anti-hate business and there is not a lot of hate out there, you'd better drum it up.

And here it is 2008 and the Canadian Jewish Congress is persecuting ... folks like David Ahenakew, a septaguenarian Indian chief in Saskatchewan ... no one listens to him. And he's babbling on about the Holocaust. We have turned Ahenakew into a national, an international figure. And we have done something else. We have fulfilled the anti-Semite's prophecy of a Jewish conspiracy.

(Note: Levant, himself Jewish, was speaking to a primarily Jewish audience. Incidentally, as someone who was 16 in 1966, I can comment that there was zero risk that Canada would go Nazi.

I am certainly not claiming that there was no racism, anti-Semitism or discrimination in those days. But Nazism was about the least cool thing anyone could imagine. And I would sure like to see that 1966 article.)

Shutting down Internet sites likened to twentieth century book burning

Mr. Levant said that shutting down Internet sites and issuing lifetime speech bans is equivalent to twentieth century book burnings.

Later several bloggers present enthusiastically agreed, as Web sites are the "new books." (So are blogs the new magazines?)

Bnai Brith and Simon Weisenthal Center should know better than to be a part of all that, he said, but "the Canadian Jewish Congress has never known better." He expressed concern that the number of Jewish people in the anti-hate industry could bolster anti-Semites' arguments, because in many cases, the laws were "essentially, to prosecute the Jews' political enemies."

Some reactions to the talk just in: Ezra Levant's own thoughts on how it went, particularly in relation to an opponent, Leo Adler from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, who spoke up during the question period:

But then Adler made my point for me, writ large: he noted that when the SWC started fighting against Internet hate, there was just one anti-Semitic website, and that now there are 8,000 of them. I think Adler was trying to prove just how big of a problem that is (though, in a world with a billion web pages, I'm not particularly alarmed). But I pointed out it did the opposite: if, despite destroying our fundamental freedom of speech, and building a jurisprudence of censorship that anti-Semites like Mohamed Elmasry are now using against Jews, Adler and company haven't been able to stop the proliferation of anti-Semitism on the Internet, wasn't that proof of his own failure?

I called Adler and his fellow "Official Jews" the super-agents who turned nobodies like Jim Keegstra and David Ahenakew and Ernst Zundel into international superstars. I pointed out that Weimar Germany's anti-hate laws didn't work either -- other than to give Hitler a head start when he took over. I just thought that summed it up perfectly: a man who claims Internet hate has increased 8,000-fold on his watch, but keep swearing by his high-tech book burning.

Leo Adler really embarrassed himself at Ezra's talk. He unburdened himself of a long, defensive pre-fab speech instead of asking a question. At one point Wendy yelled, "It's Ezra's speech, not yours."

Ezra left out the best part in his post above: trying to be gracious, Ezra thanked Adler for at least bothering to show up and confront him. Adler huffed with palpable hostility:

"Well, it's a free country!"

At which point half the audience broke out laughing, and Wendy and I called out, "Yeah, right!" and "So why are we here??"

[O'Leary was doubled over with laughter at one point and straightened up only when she realized that her midriff was muffling the tape recorder.]

Old guard time servers like Adler and Siddiqui are intimidated by unfettered free speech because their own speech -- unlike that of Steyn and Levant, who are talented phrase makers -- is riddled with stale dated, tone deaf cliches that actually undermine their own weak arguments: "It's a free country." "You're entitled to your opinion." "Everyone must obey the law."

After the talk, one audience member muttered that Adler was a "classic Red diaper baby."

Readers may recall the Stephen Boisson case, where Boisson, an Alberta Christian pastor was condemned to lifelong silence on homosexuality and ordered to deny his Christian beliefs on the subject. Levant brought up the fact that a number of gay activists have protested the ruling.

Also, referring to the "basement-dwelling schmucks" who keep neo-Nazi Web sites, he notes

There are no real Nazis in Canada, these are dress-up parts and they know that the swastika has a lot of power to offend, and unfortunately the hammer and sickle does not ... and these nobodies feel like somebody when they go on line.

Yes, one thing the anti-hate industry has done - which I would have thought impossible - is make Nazis sound cool to schmucks.

More important:

I put it to you that over the last ten, twenty, thirty years, by prosecuting our political opponents for merely being political deviants, we have laid down ten, twenty, thirty years of jurisprudence that it is okay to take out your political opponent, absent any proof of damages, absent any crime, absent any acts, you can take out your opponents if you can define them as haters. So is it any surprise that with the great influx of Islam into Canada in the last ten or fifteen years, including radicals like the Jew-hater Mohamed Elmasry ... is it any surprise that he has said, 'I'll take those precedents, I'll use them.'?

Mr. Levant then read the exact wording of the hate crimes provision that he and Mark Steyn have been charged under, noting that among the 14 human rights commissions in Canada, the wording is pretty similar in the jurisdictions that have it:

It is illegal to publish anything that is

likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt. So Steyn is charged with this and I am charged with it.

Let's go through that for a second, as lawyers, and look at the words.

likely to expose That's future tense.

Not "that you did expose them" but likely

I loved Tom Cruise's movie, Minority Report where he played a police officer in the future where they had psychics thinking that crimes would happen. Just before the crime happened, the police swooped in and arrested the guy and said, "You were gonna kill him but we stopped ya! You're charged with a pre-crime."

With a pre-crime ... Well, how do you plead when you are charged with a pre-crime?

You can't say, I didn't do it ... No one said you did do it. We just said you might do it! Likely ... Likely to be exposed.

Not "did expose"or "have exposed."

How can you plead "not guilty" to that?

Exposed a person or persons to hatred or contempt: What is hatred? What is contempt? Those are emotions.

Is there anything we see or hear or read or see on TV in politics, in sports, in sports, in art, in comedy that doesn't make us feel love or hate or respect or contempt?

I feel most of those feelings every day when I read the newspaper. I have contempt for things that are contemptible. I hate things that should be hated, and I love things that should be loved.

It's human nature. You cannot ban emotion. You cannot pass a "let's love each other" law and expect it to happen.

But that's what this law is.

The test is subjective and it's future tense. It is a pre-crime, and it's an emotional crime. Not to cause someone damage, not to hurt someone, not to violate someone's property rights or right to life or right to self-defense, or to break the contract ... but to expose them to feelings.

So how can you plead anything but guilty?!

And so when I was charged under Alberta's Section 3, ... I pled guilty.

The notorious 100 percent conviction rate under Section 13 is best understood in the light of the concept of the pre-crime. Given what I have learned about the quite serious inroads of materialism into the justice system, I am not surprised by the social engineering concept of the pre-crime, only surprised at how few knew or cared, including people in the affected communities.

*[equivalent to Section 13 the pre-crime section of the national law]

The key question, of course, is how to shut the monster down.

Is there no longer any separation of mosque and state in Canada?

The first complaint by an imam (Mohamed Elmasry) against Levant was dropped. (But a second complaint by the Edmonton Muslim Council proceeded.) To give his audience some idea of the nature of the complaints accepted by Canada's "hrc's", Mr. Levant explained,

The imam's case had various verses from the Koran as his justification.

He didn't cite Canadian law. He cited the Koran.

And he explained that he was a personal descendant of Mohammed so he was personally offended.

Instead of throwing it out, they have been prosecuting it for over 800 days and in an Access to Information request, I found that fifteen government employees are beavering away on my file. Fifteen.

I'm an industry. [much laughter]

He went on to explain that in real law, in real courts, a complaint of this type this would be "void for vagueness."

So is it any surprise that under Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, when this has been prosecuted, mainly by the Jews, that there is a 100 percent conviction rate? No one has ever been acquitted, because no one could ever be acquitted. I have probably committed six or seven hate crimes just in my talk. Because what I said it may exhort someone to some feeling. Maybe I've even committed a crime against myself.

And so what happens is that we have granted absurd discretion to politically charged activists to go after whoever they like. And so is it any surprise that 98% of those charged with Section 13 offenses are white Christian men?

Mr. Levant pointed out that if there was an even application of this law the odd fire-breathing imam (of which there are certainly some in Canada) would be charged, but the law is so vague that it is up to the discretion of the Commissioners to charge who they want.

Precisely. The law is not about stamping out hatred, as if that were possible. It is about enlarging the scope of interference in the lives of citizens. At present, it may suit a Commission to hear the hurt feelings of a Muslim descended from Mohammed against the conservative Jewish publisher who ran the Mohammed cartoons, because the Commissions are engaged in is social engineering according to a leftist agenda.

For example, in my view, they probably do not care if the complainant is descended from Mohammed or from the Wilson family across the street. They care that hearing his grievance gives them an inroad into controlling what media can publish.

Incidentally, I have found that many middle class busybodies do hate white Christian males. Anyone who has had the misfortune to listen to a certain sort of post-Christian divorcee, who is "into" therapy, will hear the topic of "what is wrong with him/them" raised rather often.

Seldom, in my experience, does anyone present suggest that there is anything wrong with the ex-wife's obsessive abuse. She is, after all, the designated offend-ee in any dispute with him.

The "human" face of fascism: Stopping hate by creating much more hate

Picking up on the theme of the human rights laws' vagueness, Mr. Levant observed,

It's even more vague than the Weimar Republic's laws. Now do you trust the Human Rights Commission to pick and choose who it will follow as targets? I don't.

Here is another thing I learned, and this was after my own hearing. I started reading up about all these cases, and I found that more than half of all the Section 13 cases in the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and in fact every single case for the last four or five years has been filed by one person. Richard Warman is his name. He used to work for the Human Rights Commission as a hate squad investigator. And then in the evenings he would file complaints and then go in to work the next day and his buddies would work on the complaints he generated. And he did this for a few years, and he's won every case and he's also won about $39,000 in tax-free pain and suffering money in addition to his other income.

But even that isn't enough because Canada just isn't that hateful a place, especially if the mosques are a no-go zone ... if you're not allowed to go after Sikh or Tamil hatemongers, there's not a lot of folks to go after.

So Richard Warman went on line in drag as a neo-Nazi. He had various code names - Pogue Mahone, that was one of them. Other human rights staff got other code names - Jadewarr, Lucy, I can't remember all of them. They would join these neo-Nazi groups like Stormfront and go on line, pretending to be Nazis, post bigoted remarks, to stir up the discussion. When someone would put their hand up, they would lay a complaint.

I put it to you that there is no greater source of anti-Semitic, anti-black, anti-gay bigotry in Canada today than the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Richard Warman himself posted 93 remarks in his code name Pogue Mahone including the following - I've read it so many times, I've memorized it -

"The founders of National Socialism - another way of saying Nazism - were against sexual deviants who are a cancer to our society."

Mr. Levant pointed out that this is not merely entrapment, because the poster actually makes bigoted comments himself ("a spewer himself of bigoted filth," in his words.) Then, having got someone charged, he gets paid for his "pain and suffering" for having joined these Web sites as a neo-Nazi member and having gone through this.

In other words, in Trudeaupian Canada, persons acting in the name of the Human Rights Commission incite hatred by repeatedly uttering it themselves.

And what is their effect on those they do not succeed in entrapping? It is common knowledge that most people are encouraged in their opinions by finding and interacting people who agree with them.

A key outcome of this supergrunge undercover operation is that we don't really know how much "hate" in Canada has actually been generated by the "human rights" commissions themselves.

Don't ever tell Maxwell Smart about this, promise? I am sure he would die of envy.

Cleaning out the intray here: In "Why Darwinism is doomed" (September 27, 2006), Jonathan Wells brought up another good reason for skepticism about pop science media (unless you are willing to believe pretty much any scambo that purports to "support evolution") - the brain evolution gene:

On Aug. 17, the pro-Darwin magazine Nature reported that scientists had just found the "brain evolution gene." There is circumstantial evidence that this gene may be involved in brain development in embryos, and it is surprisingly different in humans and chimpanzees. According to Nature, the gene may thus harbor "the secret of what makes humans different from our nearest primate relatives."

Three things are remarkable about this report. First, it implicitly acknowledges that the evidence for Darwinism was never as overwhelming as its defenders claim. It has been almost 30 years since Gould wrote that biology accounts for human nature, yet Darwinists are just now turning up a gene that may have been involved in brain evolution.

Second, embryologists know that a single gene cannot account for the origin of the human brain. Genes involved in embryo development typically have multiple effects, and complex organs such as the brain are influenced by many genes. The simple-mindedness of the "brain evolution gene" story is breathtaking.

Third, the only thing scientists demonstrated in this case was a correlation between a genetic difference and brain size. Every scientist knows, however, that correlation is not the same as causation. Among elementary school children, reading ability is correlated with shoe size, but this is because young schoolchildren with small feet have not yet learned to read – not because larger feet cause a student to read better or because reading makes the feet grow. Similarly, a genetic difference between humans and chimps cannot tell us anything about what caused differences in their brains unless we know what the gene actually does. In this case, as Nature reports, "what the gene does is a mystery."

What the "brain evolution gene" does for thinking is what chocolate bars do for nutrition: Leave people with a big, satisfied feeling. It's so good, it doesn't need to be useful.